A trip or two ago here in Atlanta I found an awesome beer store with a terrific, always changing selection.  That's JUST what I needed to make things more bearable - the 4 'acceptable' beers at the Kroger were boring the crap out of me!

This time I stumbled across The Duck-Rabbit Craft Brewery from Farmville, North Carolina. They've gone so far to print 'The Dark Beer Specialists' on the bottle of their Milk Stout - pretty bold!

The bio for the Milk Stout:

The Duck-Rabbit Milk Stout is a traditional full-bodied stout brewed with lactose (milk sugar). The subtle sweetness imparted by the lactose balances the sharpness of the highly roasted grains which give this delicious beer its black color.

Yum!  

So how's it taste? 

This is a DARK stout meaning lots of rich, toasted hoppy flavour. MOST beers in this family have quite the edge.  This Milk Stout has all the flavour of a heavy stout but with a delightful finish.  I guess if you were to describe drinking a normal stout this dark, the flavour would be like Evil Kenevil doing a crazy jump over a dozen school buses, where you hold your breath on the landing, see a little wiggle from the bike but it turns out ok.  The Milk Stout is exactly the same thing except somewhere over the 11th bus Evil Kenevil sheds his motorcycle, clothes and lands in a hot tub full of naked Suicide Girls instead.  Yes, it's that smooth.

I want, nay, NEED to try some more beers from Duck-Rabbit.  Seriously.  Check them out!

Yessireee bob, the Fest of Ale is a blast!  I had a great time last year so you better believe I'm going again this year!

A partial brewer's list for this year:

I can't wait!!

As always I've been poking and sampling, trying out whatever I can find that I haven't had before.  There's been a few things here and there worth buying but nothing that's "inspired" me enough to write up a blog entry, until now!

Weyerbacher Brewing Company hails out of Easton, Pennsylvania and has an absolutely HUGE beer library, practically one of everything.  Believe me after having the Old Heathen I'm DEFINITELY going to be sampling a bunch of the others!!  If you ever find these guys at a beer festival or the like try them out!!

You might have noticed by now that I'm definitely a dark beer fan.  Stouts and Porters all the way, especially at this time of year when it's a bit colder outside.  So I find myself here today with a Fort Collins Brewery Chocolate Stout, a Rogue Mocha Porter and the Weyerbacher Old Heathen - that's not exactly a lightweight competition to find yourself in.  But there is absolutely NO competition here, the Old Heathen wins hands down.

Given that it weighs in at 8.0% this beer naturally has some body to it.  Unlike most beers in this class it's really smooth drinking, not harsh at all.  Really if there's a single word you could use to describe it really SMOOOOOTH is it.  Like a lot of stouts in this class it's got a nice taste of chocolate, although not as much as a true "chocolate stout" like the Fort Collins.  But the Fort Collins can't even hold a candle when it comes to flavour!

Really it almost reminds me of a slice of Black Forest Cake.  It's too good to put down, but you don't want to eat a whole cake (or 6 pack) to yourself - there's just too much body to it!  I'll happily take a slice or two though!  Just watch it doesn't knock you on your butt... ;)

Oh yes, I have a Kegerator.  Saturday, August 22 shall go down in history as the day that I ceased to need my huge collection of glass bottles for my U-Brew.  Weighing in at over 170 lbs empty this is a serious machine!

OK, the build... Last time I had juuuuust gotten the fridge in the door and we'd chosen where it would live.  Well after staring at it a bunch I decided I really wanted to try and clean it up a bit.  Obviously the dents weren't going anywhere but the scrapes, scratches and stains could do with a little elbow grease.

Before:

Naturally the first question was "How do you clean up a badly scratched stainless steel refrigerator?" - Google to the rescue!  Well, sorta kinda.  Basically I learned a few things - #1 is DON'T USE STEEL WOOL ON STAINLESS STEEL - particles of the steel wool will embed themselves in the surface of the stainless.  Then guess what?  It ain't stainless anymore!  The "regular" steel from the steel wool will rust.  Well good to know - I never would have guessed.  Thing #2 I learned is DON'T USE BLEACH OR OTHER CHLORINATED CLEANERS ON STAINLESS STEEL.  Bleach reacts with stainless and will cause it to look dull or dark.  If you want it to look nice and clean, keep the bleach away from it.

Final answer?  Automotive medium grade wet/dry sandpaper, thoroughly soaked.  Use LOTS of water to keep washing away the grime and don't press TOO hard, although you definitely need to throw your weight behind it.  Always go with the grain and make sure your strokes are straight.  Oh, and do all the dents and other low spots first, THEN go over the whole surrounding area.

During:

Big difference, eh?

After:

That looks MUCH better! I feel a lot better having that next to my kitchen.

OK, so fast forward a week (and another trip to Atlanta and back for me):

Goodies!!

Double draft tower, double regulator, CO2 lines, drip tray, keg "gas gauge" strips.  Ohhhhh yeah!

I can only fit a single 1/2 barrel (a "normal" keg is called a 1/2 barrel) but I can fit two 1/4 barrels or three 1/6 barrels.  The 1/4 barrel is what I'm planning on using for the most part.  That's half a batch of U-brew so I figure this way I can have some overlap between batches.  The dual regulator comes in handy there because different types of beer need different pressures to keep them properly carbonated.  There's a whoooole lotta figuring you have to do with respect to beer pressures, line diameter and length, tap height above the keg and keg storage temperatures.  I might have to shorten one of my lines and use it just for IPAs and Porters that don't like as much CO2 pressure, but it's pretty much perfect for pale ales and things right now.

OK, the build:

I used a bi-metal hole saw from Princess Auto - it worked GREAT.  It said on the box "For Mild Steel, Stainless and Cast Iron".  From my Googling I found out you need to use some kind of lubricant with these or you just overheat them and the teeth go soft.  I used my usual favorite, plain old 10W30.  Worked fine... I got through both layers no problem and the saw is still SUPER sharp.

Test Fit

Next step was to mount the tower itself.  I measured, measured, measured to make sure the mounting bolts were spaced equally from the front and sides.  I'm kinda anal about that sort of thing since I tend to notice it forever after.  I actually noticed the draft tower itself is slightly off - the taps aren't QUITE even with respect to the mounting base.  I didn't build that part though so I'll ignore it.  :)

Nice thing about using a commercial fridge for this is it's stainless inside and out.  Most bar fridges you buy are plastic on the top and vinyl on the inside with nothing more than foam in the middle.  If you try and bolt a draft tower to that it'll be super wobbly, the plastic will crack and you'll just end up compressing the foam a bunch.  No such issues with the Silver King.  The bolts that came with my draft tower were super long too - I actually cut about 3/4" off of 'em before I mounted this all up.

Temporary Tower Cooling

One thing I learned through all of this is the draft tower itself needs to be kept cold.  That's why it's such a large diameter in the first place - you need to make sure there's plenty of airflow in the tower or the beer in the lines gets too warm and goes bad, plus you get a foamy first pour.  What a waste!  The evaporator fan in this unit runs continuously (which you want for keg cooling anyhow) so I just used an old paper towel tube to duct some of the air up the tower.  I cut the tube in half lengthwise to feed cold air up the tower while leaving enough room for it to push itself back out again.  It works GREAT - I'll probably just leave the cardboard in there till it gets mushy or something then go to Home Depot and get some vinyl tubing - they've got some big fat stuff that's about the same size as this.

Sure have come a long way from that filthy scratched up thing I started with!!  This has definitely been a labour of love.  I can't wait to actually be drinking beer from it!!!!

OK, I don't screw around.

When I decide I'm going to do something, I do it as right as I possibly can.  If that means building a website, I do the best I possibly can with a website.  If I decide I need to make my beer drinking experience beter, well - you get the picture!

I'm sick and tired of washing bottles.  Standing there with the apron on and rubber gloves going rinse-rinse-bleach one by one sucks.  I'm done having a big pile of bottles in my house.  In short I'm DONE with having all that packaging to worry about!  Straight up, when I buy cans from the liquor store I leave the 6-pack ring and recipt with them, and refuse a bag.  Packaging sucks!

So what comes next?  Well, the natural progression is to look at what I like about having bottles so much.  I like that they cost basically nothing - once you buy 'em they're yours and you can use 'em again and again.  I like that beer tastes better out of a bottle than out of a can.  I like the experience of drinking out of glass.  I hate the cleanup!

That pretty much leaves us at a draft system.  One time purchase price and you're done - you never have to clean another bottle.  You DO need to clean some lines and things but that's not nearly so bad.  Enter the KEGERATOR!!

Like I said, I don't screw around...

This is a Silver King commercial under-counter fridge.  It's designed to live up to the cruel, cruel world of commercial food preparation which means it was designed from day one to be abused, and better yet repaired!  No sense in building your kegerator around some crappy cheap fridge that bites the dust in a couple years and you have to start from scratch.  This baby was built to LAST!

For now I've just got my cans in there - had to make sure the fridge worked before I started putting even more beer in there! There's a glass up at the top with a thermometer in it - the air temp inside your fridge isn't really anything more than "of interest" - the actual temperature of the liquid inside is what matters.  Beer doesn't pour right unless it's between 34-38 degrees Fahrenheit. Doesn't mean that's the right temp to drink it at!! There's NOTHING wrong with pouring in to a warmer glass and giving it a chance to gain a little temperature - only crappy beer tastes better the colder it is!

My taps and things show up some time HOPEFULLY this week, or early next week at the latest.  Only thing is I'm going to be away next week - I'll be going nuts if it doesn't show up by Friday!!!!  More to come as things progress...

I'm in Atlanta drinking beer from North Carolina!

This time around I'm sharing Highland Brewing Company's Oatmeal Porter.  I'm a big fan of dark beers though I usually tend to avoid them at this time of year... Summer is more for IPA's than Porters!  But HBC's Oatmeal Porter is a bit different from most...

A lot of porters tend to be a bit on the bitter side - the flavour of the Highland is quite smooth though with that great almost coffee finish and a well balanced taste.  Definitely an easy drinker!  It doesn't have as wild a body as some Porters, but I think a strong Porter is really an acquired taste.  This beer is a great place to get yourself started in the world of beers you can barely see through!

Highland Brewing Company has a few other interesting titles in their library - if I had more time here I think I'd be seeking out their Black Mocha Stout for a taste.  Next trip to ATL perhaps! 

Can't have all our fun here in Vancouver, right?

In a few weeks I'm heading up to Pentiction for the Fest-of-Ale - it's a pretty good deal, $20 for a ticket and then beer tokens are $1 each.  Most beer samples are only one token, and as an added bonus a lot of the food is only a couple of tokens too!  $2 burgers anyone?

Here's this year's brewery list:

Alpine Brewing Company Inc. (US)
Big Al Brewing (US)
Boundary Bay (US)
Bravo Beer Co.
Cannery Brewery Company
Central City Brewing Co.
Corby Distillers Ltd.
Crannóg Ales
Dead Frog Brewery
Fernie Brewing Company
Granville Island Brewing Company Inc.
Growers Cider
Hells Gate Brewing Company
Lost Coast Brewery
Mikes Hard Lemonade
Mt. Begbie Brewing
Old Schoolhouse Brewery (US)
Old Yale Brewing Co.
Paddock Wood Brewing
Pyramid Brewery
Shuswap Lake Brewing Co.
The Tin Whistle Brewing Company Ltd.
Tree Brewing Co.
VEX
Whistler Brewing Co.
Yanjing Beer Group

Just a few there eh?

Anyhow, check out the event home page here: http://www.fest-of-ale.bc.ca

Sierra Nevada Pale Ale is definitely worth checking out.  If you're ever in Vegas, for god's sake stay away from the casinos when you buy beer!  You absolutely do not need to pay $7 for a Coors Light.  Go find yourself a grocery store or whatever that sells beer - there's lots of them on the east end of the strip.  They're still pricey for the US - you'll pay about $11 - $12 for a 6-pack so pretty much "normal" prices for Vancouver.

Anyhow, on to Sierra Nevada Pale Ale.  It's a nice bitter Pale Ale with a really tasty flavor, and quite a nice finish.  They pre-treat the bottle with a yeasty beer mixture so there's usually a touch of yeast in the bottom of the bottle, but that's how you know you're getting something besides plain old ordinary boring beer.

If I had to choose a local Pale Ale that had the same kind of flavor, I'd go for Nelson Brewing.  The Sierra Nevada is better though - it's got more body and really has a much fuller taste.  Lots of hoppy flavour much like Nelson, but there's just more to it.  Check it out!